Lawyers for internet rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation have joined Auernheimer's defence, saying he is being unduly punished for revealing an AT&T network flaw to the media.

"Weev is facing more than three years in prison because he pointed out that a company failed to protect its users' data, even though his actions didn't harm anyone," said EFF attorney Marcia Hofmann.

Weev is facing more than three years in prison because he pointed out that a company failed to protect its users' data, even though his actions didn't harm anyone

"The punishments for computer crimes are seriously off-kilter, and congress needs to fix them."

But US Attorney Paul Fishman said Auernheimer "knew he was breaking the law" and that "when it became clear that he was in trouble, he concocted the fiction that he was trying to make the internet more secure ... The jury didn't buy it, and neither did the court in imposing sentence upon him today."

Auerheimer's co-defendant Daniel Spitler discovered that AT&T configured its servers so that queries made using ID numbers from SIM cards in iPads got back the e-mail address of respective iPad owners.

Spitler wrote a computer program that exploited the security hole to collect approximately 120,000 e-mail addresses, and Auernheimer sent the list to several journalists to spotlight the security problem, according to the EFF. Spitler and Auernheimer were criminally charged as co-defendants.